Amazing illustration work of Simon Prades and Haruki Murakami's speech at the ceremony of Catalonia International Prize:

"In the Japanese language we have a word - "mujô" - which means that nothing is permanent, there is nothing that lasts forever. All things that exist in the world vanished, everything changes constantly. There's no eternal balance, nothing is immutable because you can not trust them forever.

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We could say that this idea of ​​"everything has an end" implies a certain resignation to the world, this means that there's nothing that man can do to oppose the course of nature. However, the Japanese had found a beautiful way to look at this resignation.

If you look closely at nature, for example, in the spring they admire the 'sakura', the fireflies in the summer, and in the autumn the yellow leaves from the woods. Day by day they watch everything with passion, every moment as a routine, almost as an axiom. When the time comes, the most famous places to see the flowers of 'sakura', or fireflies, or autumn leaves, get fill with people, and it becomes almost impossible to book a hotel.

Because the beauty of the 'sakura', fireflies, and the leaves of autumn, disappears after a while. The Japanese can travel many miles to see the splendor of the transience of these phenomena. But they don't limit themselves to just see this beauty, they also feel relief when they discover how the flowers 'sakura' and the dim light of the fireflies spread, or how the vivid colors of the trees go off . Indeed, they find peace when beauty has reached the climax, and starts to disappear...

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As I said in the beginning, we live in a world of change and transition, marked by the concept of "mujô", which tells us that any lifestyle changes and eventually disappear. That man is powerless when facing the huge force of nature. Awareness of this transience is one of the basic ideas of Japanese culture. At the same time, and although we respect the things that have disappeared and we're aware that we live in a fragile world where everything can disappear at any moment, we Japanese also have a positive mindset that drives us to live joyfully.

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I am very pleased to share with you the same story. The work of writers is to dream. But we still have a most important job: to share our dreams with others. It is impossible to be a writer without having that feeling of wanting to share what you write.

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We should not be afraid to dream. We should not engage in the causes of disasters, which come with the name of "efficiency" and "convenience." We must be "unrealistic dreamer", advancing at a steady pace. Humans die and disappear. But humanity endures. It's something that continues indefinitely. Above all, one must believe in the power of humanity.